A Gwinnett magistrate denied bond Tuesday to two Tennessee bounty hunters charged with kidnapping and aggravated assault during a botched arrest of fugitive on a traffic ticket.
Khalil Abdullah, 45, and Kevin Roberson, 51, were arrested Nov. 23 after police said they kicked in the door of a home on Castlebrook Way near Lawrenceville in search of a man a Tennessee bail bondsmen had ordered captured.
At the time, police said the two bail-enforcement agents pointed guns at the man's wife and children and threatened them after the fugitive fled. Gwinnett Police Cpl. Ed Ritter said the man was wanted on misdemeanor traffic violation.
The two men had also “arrested” the man’s wife because they said she obstructed the door while her husband jumped out a window, which is the basis of the kidnapping charge, said Gwinnett Assistant District Attorney Charissa Henrich.
“That is basically what the case is about — so the case got bound over and it will go forward,” Henrich told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Tuesday.
In an unusual move, Abdullah testified at the hearing that their actions had been lawful. Defendants at this stage generally sit mute and allow police to outline the evidence against them, in part because the threshold for binding the case over to Superior Court is so low.
But this no normal case, said Abdullah’s lawyer, Tom Robinson, a former Fulton County prosecutor. The law gives bounty hunters wide latitude to capture a fugitive — allowing them to enter homes without warrants, to use force and firearms and commit various acts that would be unconstitutional if the police did them.
Robinson said state law allowed the men to take the wife into custody. Officers on the scene told them it was OK to take the wife to jail until a commanding officer decided they should be charged with felonies, Robinson said.
“Our position is that they had lawful authority and were there for a lawful purpose and that is why the (original) home-invasion charge was dismissed,” Robinson said.
Police at the time said the men left with the wife without permission. The two men were arrested with the wife in their car as they were surveying some woods where they thought her husband may have been hiding, Robinson said.
One of the children captured the bounty hunters invasion of the home on a cellphone camera. At the time, the man’s wife told the media that the men were threatening to shoot her and her children.
Robinson said his client and his partner were actually warning the children to stay in their rooms because they “could get shot” as they searched for the man who they feared might have a firearm.
The cellphone recording could support either version. “Shouting ‘before you get shot’ doesn’t sound that great,” Robinson acknowledged.“He wanted the children to go into their room in case there were some kind of shooting.”
He described Abdullah as a family man with a master’s degree in engineering who works for the Tennessee Valley Authority and does bail enforcement as a sideline.
The two men from the Chattanooga area are being held in the Gwinnett County jail. Both Robinson and Henrich said they could not shed any light on why a misdemeanor or traffic charge would have sparked so much drama.
“That would be a question for the bail bondsman,” Robinson said.
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